Black powder flow monitoring in pipelines by means of multi-hop LoRa networks

The aim of this paper is to present a LoRa-basedarchitecture to be used to monitor the formation of Black Powder(BP) in gas pipelines. The proposed network architecture isbased on a multi-hop linear topology that allows to deploy amonitoring infrastructure that can be used to cover extremelylong pipeline structures thanks to the wide transmission rangeof the LoRa technology. Together with the network architecture,a novel protocol based on nodes synchronization and very lowduty-cycling is proposed, in order to reduce power consumptionand then to ensure long life-time to the whole monitoringinfrastructure. The network is expected to be used to detect BPflow in gas pipelines: for this application scenario, a measurementsystem based on electrostatic monitoring is presented. Thissystem is integrated onto a sensor node composed of low powercomponents, in order to reduce power consumption and thenincrease as much as possible the node life time.